Grundish and Askew Read online

  Two weeks into the stay at Straight, Inc., a new patient was brought before the group. Everybody but Grundish knew him. Everyone was pissed off. They all screamed at him as he stood still, smiling a beautiful happy smile, like he was in a better place. A place where people weren’t inches in front of his face with their sour breath, calling him names. The kid’s name was Buddy and he ran away from the program. Buddy was a big kid, too. The staff decided that Grundish wasn’t going to be a problem and sent Buddy home that night to the Flannigan house.

  On the way home, Buddy and Grundish sat in the back of Flannigan’s car. “Hey, man, what’s your story?” Buddy asked Grundish and smiled that big goofy smile of his.

  “Hey, stop talking back there!” Flannigan ordered. “You know the rules, Buddy. You guys are not supposed to be talking to each other.”

  “Fuck you, Flannigan. What’re you gonna do about it?” Buddy challenged.

  “I’m gonna turn around, take you back to the building, and have you put in a time out room for a week,” said Flannigan.

  “Good,” laughed Buddy, “that way I won’t have to see your stupid snaggle-tooth face.” Buddy turned to Grundish, “Seriously, what’s your story? You don’t look like a queer, or a fucked up junkie like most of the losers in group.”

  Grundish just shrugged. It was a talent he had, shrugging and not answering. He didn’t much see the point in getting involved with Buddy’s rebellion. He immediately liked Buddy but didn’t want any trouble. Just do your time and get out, he thought.

  “You know you’re not getting out of here unless you tell them what they want to hear,” Buddy said.

  “Shut up, Buddy!” Flannigan yelled. “You’re in enough trouble already. Don’t make it worse.”

  “I’ve been in here for two years now, and I don’t see myself being done with it until I’m eighteen and can sign myself out. You won’t get out of here unless you play the game. Oh,” Buddy mocked, “I was so fucked up and hated myself so much that I sucked a badger’s cock. Please help me because I can’t help myself. I’m powerless over drugs and need a higher power to help me. Wahhhh. I hate myself. Wahhhh, wahhhh, wahhh, fucking WAHHHH!”

  “You know what we should do?” Buddy continued, nudging Grundish with his elbow. “We should toss fat boy Flannigan out of this old station wagon and get the fuck out of here. Just go out on the road for a while. You’re not gonna get out of this program otherwise. They don’t let you out. They keep you here until your parents’ insurance payments dry up or you become an adult and sign yourself out.”

  A nervous laugh escaped Flannigan. “Stop fucking around Buddy. If you want to sink down to rock bottom... well, fine...but don’t drag this guy down with you.”

  “Do yourself a favor,” Buddy said to Grundish, ignoring Flannigan. “Get the fuck out of here. It’ll do nothing but mess your head, and real bad, too. Let’s overtake this fat piece of shit in the front seat and split.”

  Again it was clear to Grundish. He wasn’t going to make it through the program. He didn’t have the ability to convince them that he had a drug problem. He didn’t and he wasn’t going to play their game. He could do some short time in juvee and be out, an all-around better deal than spending two years in a warehouse having people yell at him, call him names and accuse him of every sexual perversion imaginable. Grundish didn’t even know what docking[4] was, but he was accused of doing it.

  “All right,” Grundish said. “I am getting out of here but I’m not running away. I just want to go to juvee to do my time. But, I’ll help you, Buddy. I like you. Fuck it.” Grundish leaned up over the driver’s seat and grabbed Flannigan by the neck. With one hard tug he tore Flannigan away from the steering wheel and dragged him into the back seat. Buddy jumped up over the front seat and yanked the steering wheel, cutting the car out of the way of the oncoming traffic. In the backseat Flannigan struggled against the half-nelson Grundish had locked on him. With the car pulled over on the side of the road, Buddy jumped out, opened the back door and helped drag the flailing Flannigan out of the family cruiser.

  “Dump him on the ground and let’s split in his car,” Buddy yelled at Grundish.

  “No,” grunted Grundish, holding a headlock tight on Flannigan. “Take the keys to the car, lock the doors, and get out of here on foot. I’m not going to be a part of a grand theft auto. I’ll hold him long enough for you to get out of here.”

  Buddy snatched the keys out of the car, locked the doors, and ran off into the woods while Flannigan continued to struggle against the pure muscle clamped around his neck. When Buddy was out of sight, Grundish released Flannigan, shrugged his shoulders and said, “Sorry, man. Now go get the pigs so that they can help you with your car and take me back to juvee.” Grundish lay down on the hood of the station wagon and waited for Flannigan to return with the cops.

  When he got back to juvee, Grundish got another tattoo, a heart with Mom written across it. Nothing original, but it was sincere. Squid was still there and had updated his equipment. Instead of the needle and ink, he now had a contraption made out of a cassette player motor, a guitar string, and various other random parts. The new equipment allowed Squid to put more detail into his work.

  Midway through the piece, Squid stopped the makeshift tattoo gun and asked, “you know that shit I told you about fucking a horse?”

  “Yeah.”

  “It ain’t true,” Squid said, grinning sheepishly. “I was just kind of fucking with your head.”

  Grundish shrugged his shoulders and sat still so Squid could finish the heart.

  • • •

  His first time in prison, Grundish didn’t know what to expect. Despite all of his talk, he was scared. Despite his size, he didn’t want to have to have to fight. Grundish could trade blows on the street if he had to and usually came out better than the other guy. Still, there is something about being the new fish that can scare the shit out of the toughest guys. Grundish had an instinct for surviving, though. Somehow he knew to stay away from the screws that caused people trouble. He knew when to stand his ground and when to walk away from other inmates. He didn’t run his mouth or talk shit. Mostly he was quiet.

  Grundish wasn’t thieving, violent, mean, or evil. He didn’t rape babies or beat up elderly people. That’s not how he ended up in prison. He didn’t rob people. He didn’t hurt people who didn’t deserve hurting. He just liked stuff. More specifically, he liked other people’s stuff. He liked to borrow their stuff. He liked to use their stuff.

  Grundish liked stuff. And there were several ways to get stuff. Grundish could have gotten a job, worked hard, saved money, and bought some stuff. That was for suckers. As with most of his life decisions, Grundish took the easy way. With a keen instinct for determining a luxury-laden house where the residents were on vacation or gone for the weekend, Grundish would squat in an opportune dwelling for a day or two. He would sometimes invite Askew along. They would order pay-per-view porn. They would gorge themselves on the best food in the freezer and the most expensive liquor in the house. Grundish might take one or two nice items that he liked. If there was an expensive suit, he would take it and wear it a couple of times and then give it to a homeless person. When he was done with a house, he would find the photo albums or something else of obvious sentimental value and set it out on the kitchen counter with a note saying something like this is all that matters.

  Grundish was good at his career. But he still got caught sometimes. Whenever he did, the victims would testify at his sentencing that he made them reconsider what really mattered in their lives. They always asked the judge to be lenient. As a result, Grundish never served a sentence of more than a year. Each time he was sent up, Grundish got more ink: a soaring eagle across his back...FUCK on the knuckles of his left hand, KILL on the knuckles of his right...a rose and a dagger on the palm of his hand[5]...born to lose on his neck...a fire-breathing dragon on his right forearm.

  During his final stint in the joint, Grundish made himself a promise. He w
as never going back to prison. It’s not that he made an oath to do no wrong. He simply decided that maybe Askew always had the right idea: just don’t get caught. So on the day that he was granted parole for the last time, Grundish made a vow never to get caught with his figurative pants down again.

  3

  The apple core flies through the air as if in slow motion. Grundish’s reflexes, catlike and precise, react well before his brain gathers what is happening. With the fruit refuse hurtling its way on a collision course with his head, Grundish leaps back and swats the gnarled malus sylvestris with his arrow-shaped HOMES NOW AVAILABLE sign. Once the offending apple is sauced with a powerful slap of the sign, Grundish’s mind catches up with his body and takes account of the incident. They just threw an apple at me. I’m going to fuck up those rich little brats one of these days, he thinks, wiping the apple sauce on the grass. This time he got a good look at the driver, with his stringy blond hair and skeevy little mustache. The image is securely filed away in a subfolder of his brain labeled Payback.

  It is a recurring event. The hulking, tattooed, fur-faced ex-con standing on the street corner, earning minimum wage as a human billboard, holding down an honest job. And that minivan full of kids drives by and bombards him with rotting food products and verbal taunts. Sometimes they shout “loooo-zer” at him. Sometimes it is just loud laughing. It doesn’t matter on what street corner the advertising agency places him. It doesn’t matter if his arrow-sign is encouraging people to check out great housing bargains or two-for-one pizza deals. The minivan always tracks him down. Grundish often fantasizes about that van breaking down right in front of him; he can visualize himself snapping their skinny necks, one at a time, and leaving behind a pile of smirking, pimple-faced corpses.

  For Grundish, every day is enough of a struggle without a hoard of punk teenagers mocking his lot in life. It’s not like when he was a kid Grundish aspired to stand on a street corner with an arrow-shaped sign, trying to entice the traffic to turn and check out condominiums which he himself could never afford. No, Grundish didn’t really aspire to anything as a youngster. Consequently, he found himself almost ready to turn thirty and working a job that the day-laborers turned up their noses at. But at least he wasn’t in prison.

  “Don’t you just hate punk kids?” asks the unmistakable raspy voice behind Grundish. “I do. Hell, I’ll probably be supervising some of those delinquents one of these days. So how are you liking your job, anyway?”

  Grundish slowly turns around, wiping the remnants of smashed apple on his pants. It is Miss Velda, his parole officer. Velda, a squat, sturdy lump of femininity, like a wrecking ball that broke off of its chain, is another of the festering boils on the ass of Grundish’s life. Not that she tries to give him problems. It’s just that she is always appearing behind him out of nowhere and commenting on his state of affairs. Always needing him to do a piss test. “Come on, I need you to go whiz for me,” she says, latching onto his solid, tattooed forearm and escorting him to the restroom of the Git-n-Go mart.

  “Miss Velda, I ain’t on drug offender probation, so why do I have to keep taking these tests?” Grundish asks, feigning innocence as best he can. He will never fail a drug test with Ms. Velda. The cannabinoids in his blood and urine will never be detected by the field test. The THC and various illicit chemical compounds are a constant presence in his system, but, Grundish has an ace up his sleeve. Actually he always has a prosthetic penis (nicknamed Steve for no particular reason) tucked in his pants that is filled with clean urine and ready for the testing.[6] Grundish never leaves the security of his trailer without Steve being filled with a fresh, clean, sample. The entire pack makes for an impressive frontal basket presentation.

  Ironically, it was the fake schlong that caused Velda to start testing Grundish in the first place. The oversized bulge in the front of his pants caught her eye the first time she met with her charge. From that day forth, Velda regularly showed up requesting a sample. As per the Department of Corrections’ supposed regulations, Velda has to witness the actual sample presentation.

  “Miss Velda, I’m really uncomfortable having to pee in front of you,” Grundish pleads as he unfurls the club-shaped and realistic looking phallus from his pants.

  At the sight of what Velda believes to be a fresh slab of throbbing man-meat, Velda’s eyes glaze over and a shiver shoots down her spine, pausing in her loin briefly to spark the candle that brews the fondue in her panties. She stands awestruck, as always, at the veiny faux meat-club with its bulbous, purple-tinted head. Grundish’s practiced hands manipulate the prosthetic penis perfectly, draining the clean urine into the specimen cup and even shaking off the last couple of drops for a realistic effect.

  From her shirt pocket Velda extracts an expired ketone testing strip (the only evidence of her all-protein diet years earlier). “Now hand me the cup, and leave that thing out,” she says, pointing the fraudulent strip at the fraudulent dong, “while I test the sample.” Her eyes, wide open, topped with a fuzzy unibrow, and locked on the dangling participle, never stray as she stirs the clean urine sample. “Well,” Miss Velda briefly glances at the test stick before resuming full dong-focus, “it looks like you’re clean, Mister. Good job. You can go ahead and put that thing away. Perhaps we should go somewhere so that we can discuss the terms of your probation and maybe...”

  “Miss Velda,” Grundish interrupts, “I really have to get back to work. If I’m gone too long, my boss will can me. He knows that if I don’t have a job, then I can be violated on my parole. And he gives me a hard enough time about that. I don’t want any trouble. I just wanna get back to work.”

  “Well, get back to it then, Mister,” she says, swatting him gently on the rump as he starts for the door. Grundish pauses, and in that nanosecond he ponders the shit he puts up with—the kids in the van, the shitty job, strapping on a synthetic penis and a bag of someone else’s urine everyday, sexual harassment from Velda, and then the thought of returning to prison—and he decides to keep walking. He can’t go back to prison. That is a promise he made to himself. And a man ain’t nothing if he can’t at least keep his promises, Grundish thinks. Swallowing down a gulletful of humility, Grundish clenches his teeth and walks out the door, back to his minimum wage human-directional career. As Grundish returns to his thankless and meaningless work, Miss Velda stays behind in the restroom. She slips her middle finger in and out of the sweaty fat folds she calls a vagina and fantasizes about the molded hunk of silicone strapped to Grundish’s crotch.

  4

  Grundish and Askew arrive at their trailer at the same time, both carrying the tired slouch of the beaten down. Grundish with a twelve pack of Milwaukee’s Best. Askew with a cold supreme pizza left over from a prank order. Two nobodies settling in for a dinner of warm beer and cold pizza.

  “You should’a seen her face,” Grundish tells his friend, relating the incident with Miss Velda. “Practically drooling and quivering. It was like a dog eyeing a thick, greasy pork chop. I swear I should just fuck her and get it over with. Maybe I can get my supervision early-terminated. I could just plug up my nose, close my eyes and pretend she’s your sister.”

  “You should give it a try,” Askew agrees, ignoring the sister comment. He pops the top on his beer can. “She’s a volumptuous piece of ass. You could do worse. She’s got big plump titties.” He wedges a hand under the worn elastic band of his underwear and ponders the situation. “Yeah, but she’d probably be disappointed with that little bitty thing you got between your legs. She’s used to seeing that monster thick-dick you keep pulling out in front of her. And then you show her what you really got,” he shrugs, “hell, she’s libel to just go ahead and violate your parole right then and there. Then again, you ain’t been laid in a while and you wouldn’t have that much time to finish off your sentence.”

  “Why are you always doing that?” Grundish asks and pops the top on his beer, releasing an ooze of warm foam down the side of the can.

  “Doing what?
”

  “Agreeing with me in one breath, and then disagreeing with me in the next, and then changing course again? It drives me fucking bat-shit sometimes. Can’t you just give me a straight answer for once?”

  “It’s called the di-electric process,” explains Askew. “Point and counterpoint. Ying and yang compete until eventually the true answer becomes apparent. The answer is usually somewhere in between the original points of view. So there you have it.”

  “Well the dialectric process sucks balls. There you have it.” Opening the pizza box on the floor in front of him, Grundish extracts a piece, groans, and slaps it back down. “Aw fuck! Olives again. You know I can’t stand that shit. Even if I pluck them off, the olive juice has already soaked in and tainted the entire pizza. The whole damn thing tastes like rotten vegetables.” He throws the pizza back in the box and eats his beer for dinner.

  Grabbing a piece of the pie for himself, picking off the olives, and taking a huge bite, Askew agrees through a mouthful of masticated pizza, “I know, it’s pretty nasty. That taste don’t go away. But then again, I do kind of like it, too. What’s up with you tonight? You’re being quite the whiny little bitch.”

  “I don’t know. I’m just getting tired of the shit. I’m getting tired of the Fuckers.”

  “The Fuckers?” Askew asks, ingurgitating the greater part of the pizza slice in one gulp, and finishes the question with a raise of his eyebrows.

  “Yeah. The Fuckers,” answers Grundish. “The people that shit on me everyday. The punks who throw fruit[7] at me while I’m working my lousy job. Miss Velda eyeballing my fake dick. And did I tell you about my boss?”